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A team of cybersecurity researchers have specially crafted a
malicious text message – dubbed the "SMS of Death" – that can
render cell phones that receive it completely inoperable,
according to a report by the security firm Kaspersky Lab.

Collin Mulliner and Nico Golde demonstrated the deathly message
at this week’s Chaos Communication Congress, a hacking conference
in Berlin.

After creating a GSM mobile network in their lab, Mulliner and
Golde sent the corrupted text message to thousands of phones.
Some had their calls interrupted or disconnected upon receiving
the text, while others
just plain broke.

Samsung, LG and other cell phones that allow Web browsing but are
less technologically advanced than
Androids and iPhones are particularly susceptible to falling
victim to the SMS of Death. These types of handsets make up
roughly 85 percent of the world’s phones.

Mulliner said he and his colleague built the SMS of Death to spur
the mobile phone industry into revamping its cybersecurity
defenses.

Mobile devices have become increasingly popular vectors for
malware attacks. An SMS trojan for
Android devices was recently discovered, and flaws in the
iPhone and
Blackberry have been exploited as well.